07 May 2005

I just like to reinforce Mig's Post on the switching to Netbeans from an ex-user standpoint. And I found that the Top 10 reasons to switch is the same as the top 10 reasons not to switch :))

1. First To Support Java 5.0 - So what? After that, then what? What is the impact it will make to my productivity? In few days other IDEs will have the same thing as well so what's the wisdom of this being on top of the list? Ask your seatmates now, did they switched their apps to Java 5.0 that has been running for years now? Did your customer EVEN SWITCHED to 1.4 already??? This is so vague.

2. Mobility Pack - So whhaaat??!! Nokia has it's mobility SDK, Sony Ericsson does, Siemens, Motorola does and so forth and so forth. Will the Netbeans mobility pack address every manufacturer's concerns? Good Luck!

3. Project Based on Ant - SO WHAT? Will you switch from Eclipse for this reason?

4. The Profiler - There's only one Profiler tool that I believe in, it's the US$2000 Sitraka JProbe. I don't even use any Eclipse Profiling plugins. Most likely they will do interesting things on your system.

5. J2EE Development - Tell me about it. Is J2EE a rocket science? So what's the big deal about this?

6. It's fast - It's not your mother's NetBeans but it's still your NetBeans. These assholes are insulting my intelligence. I know Netbeans wasn't written by marketing people. Being a developer we all know that FAST IS RELATIVE. Now, how fast?

7. Best out of box experience - "Best" is objective. I don't know what's going on inside the Netbeans development community but it seems they enjoy tugging each other unmentionables.

8. It's Cool - Yeah and you're crazy...dorkhead.

9. More International Language Support - Netbeans developer: "...yeah because back then we thought English will be just fine."

10. 100% Java, Product of the Year - Good. Can I make money now? I am still wondering how many asses these guys kissed to get that.

Ok, yadda, yadda, yadda, yadda. I tell you what, after 4 releases they still don't have auto-imports! Organize imports! As simple as that and yet they can't still do a lot of things, I tried to use the latest release hoping I could switched back, but really it's a big turn off.

Let's see - you don't care about J2SE 5.0, you don't care about doing mobile apps faster, you don't care about a first class ant build system (import and export project to virtually any other system), you don't care about a free high quality profiler, you don't care about J2EE as part of the IDE - free- (instead you must like poor quality plugins or forking over dollars for a decent J2EE plugin), you don't care that many that have looked at NetBeans and Eclipse find NetBeans faster (that's relative), you don't care that everything works out of the box as opposed to doing an easter egg plugin hunt, you don't care about the best open source GUI builder or VisualGC, etc.etc. Okay now we all understand what you don't care about.

Found it an interesting read and made me wonder what type of code you write :)

You love GUI editors, GUI editors generates bulky and lousy codes. I hand-code my JPanels, JFrames, ButtonGroups etc. in a more granular form so I can have better control maintaining them and I can plug in events on the fly. You haven't encountered that in your career I think.

What I don't care about is Netbeans being the first to suppor Java 5.0, so what? Get the drift?

I shit you not, I would suggest that you start using Eclipse' Ant Build tools. All the tag auto-completes, and error notifications are great.

Poor quality J2EE plugins? Man, first I don't need a J2EE plugin, those are for sissies.

I don't do easter egg plugin hunt, because I have a clear direction on how I am going to use my tools. I only have at least 3 third-party plugins attached. XMLBuddy, QuantumDB and Jalopy. That's all.

And you seem to have a love affair with these over-lazy stuff. I guess you're writing some 200-line methods or 5000-line classes in your projects. I am lazy, but I am lazy with sense. I guess I understand what is a good code for you.

Hey, JaredI completely agree with you on NetBeans. They can boast of 'support this' and support that' but in the long run they will be missing some very handy features like auto-import. I've been to India and I've heard Indian programmers raving about NetBeans. Personally I'm from Eastern Europe and I tend to use a cracked version of JetBrains IDEA like most programmers here. I guess all these IDE wars are regional at some point.What surprises me is how furious one can get defending their favorite framework or IDE. I've read some posts and articles by Gavin King (the guy behind JBoss who also wrote Hibernate). I think he's insane :) He really does get it personal. But getting back to Java IDE's . What IDE do you use?